Bush Crush! Golden Gals of the G.O.P. Gather to Help Starving Children

On Thursday, April 26, Presidential niece, Princeton senior and part-time fashion model Lauren Bush hosted a fund-raiser at the 401 Projects gallery for FEED, the charity she founded to raise money for starving children in the Third World.

“If you bring food to the schools, it incentivizes the children to learn,” said Ms. Bush, who apparently shares a flair for the demotic with her uncle in the White House. She was looking radiant in a white and gold cocktail dress, heels and a FEED tote bag—a FEED bag?—of her own design.

The bags, as well as T-shirts, were on sale at the party, along with the photographs of Ms. Bush’s world travels adorning the walls; guests were reminded that a mere $59.95 in profit would keep an African child fed and in school for an entire year.

“I can tell you my contribution to the design of the T-shirt,” said Joanna Coles, editor of Marie Claire, which helped to sponsor the event. “Lauren came in and she designed the bag first, and the bags have got the word ‘feed’ on it. And then she held up the T-shirt and she said, ‘I’m gonna put the word ‘FEED’ right here.’” Ms. Coles patted the front of the shirt. “And I said, ‘I don’t think you want to do that—the word ‘FEED’ across the woman’s chest is not exactly what you want.’”

“I thought we should do women’s underwear that said ‘FEED’ across the front,” brightly chirped Periel Ashenbrand, a gallery director. “Or how about the butt for, like, gay guys?”

“No, no, no—not very classy,” said Ms. Bush’s chipper younger sister, Ashley. She was one of four Bushes in the house that night: Lauren’s mother Sharon and cousin Barbara were also there. Ashley is planning to move to New York full time when she graduates from a prep school in Houston later this month. “I’ve got prom on Saturday,” she said. “So I flew out for this. That’s right, cheaptickets.com—you know it!” Now that’s classy!

Sharon Bush, meanwhile, was waxing nostalgic. “I’ve always told her she’s just an old soul,” she said of Lauren, a vegetarian. “It was really my fault, because I took her to a farm and I told her, you know, ‘When you have hamburgers, this is from the cow, and you have chicken, and this is from the chicken.’ And she loved the animals so much that she didn’t want to eat meat after that. She said she didn’t want to eat anything with a face.”

Mama Bush was beaming now. “From 3 on, she didn’t eat meat,” she said of her charitable firstborn. “So she’s like a little Buddha.”